


On Stars and Distance

by GalaxyOwl



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/F, Post-Hephaestus, Sharing a Bed, not actually that shippy but oh well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 09:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7972156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyOwl/pseuds/GalaxyOwl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hephaestus crew returns to Earth, but even dramatic homecomings have to wait until a reasonable hour of morning. Her first night back in a real bed, Minkowski has trouble falling asleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Stars and Distance

Her first impression is that the hotel room is small, and so unfalteringly normal she doesn't know what to make of it. Lovelace is standing beside her; Minkowski doesn't remember how the lots fell for the two of them to be rooming together, but she doesn't mind. Of all of them, she’s probably the least likely to try to make conversation, the least likely to try to force Minkowski to think more than she absolutely has to about her current situation.

"I guess this is us," Lovelace says. 

There's some part of her brain that's still screaming, despite the mundanity of everything in her surroundings. Something has to be going wrong. There has to be an engine malfunction or a murderer chasing after them; one way or another they must all be about to die terrible deaths lightyears away from Earth.

But they’re here.

There is only the one bed in the room. Whatever obscure branch of the government that is managing their return to the planet apparently spared little expense setting this all up. But Minkowski doesn’t really mind. She’s so tired she could practically fall asleep on the floor; a little less mattress space to herself hardly matters.

Minkowski stumbles the handful of yards over to the bed and collapses into it. It is soft, and warm, and _safe_ , and she almost wants to cry because this is the first time in a very long time that she's experienced any of those things.

***

When the first people to go to the moon sent pictures back to Earth, the world changed forever. The planet, viewed from such a distance, was entirely different. From so far away, you can’t see all of the cities and homes and lives. Just clouds, and land, and blue, and blue, and blue. 

The first human expedition to Mars happened when Minkowski was a kid. She has vivid memories of hearing the news, her parents’ excitement. Little Renée not really understanding what it was all about. 

There were photos, this time, too, plastered across every newsfeed. Not a novelty, not after they’d been watching the red planet through their machines for so very long, but this time they counted more, somehow.

From Mars, the Earth is nothing but another star among many, a distant speck of possibility just above the horizon.

From Wolf 359, Earth is invisible. Just but a far-way nothing. On the right day, at the right time, you can still see the sun, but that’s all. It was so underwhelming, the first time Minkowski picked it out from amidst the constellations. Nothing but a faint yellow-white star in the sky, holding in its orbit the entirety of human ingenuity and existence. 

The entirety, until them. Until NASA and Goddard and everyone else starting moving outwards, upwards, expanding the sphere of humanity in what _should_ have been something amazing. Minkowski doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to think of it that way again.

She once asked Lovelace if she ever thought she was going to die there.

"Only every second.” Delivered with a laugh.

It was a fair answer, but it didn't quite cover this _feeling_ Minkowski had been having. This terrible knowledge that she’d probably never make it back to Earth at all. Never walk on solid ground, or see real sunlight. Not from any closer than eight light years away. 

It's strange to think, as Minkowski lies there in that hotel room, that Wolf 359 still exists. Somewhere out there, the Hephaestus is still spinning, falling out of its carefully-calculated orbit, a lifeless husk of what it was. It seems too distant to be real. 

When Minkowski took her first step on Earth after their landing, her first thought was how beautiful the night sky looked, stars scattered across it like so much celestial dust. Wolf 359 was in a different position in space, and the patterns of the stars around them were skewed ever-so-slightly. This was the first time in years she’d seen the stars the way they looked in all her charts.

Her eyes drifted towards Leo. She could pick out the shape easily; she's seen it now, neat and stylized, in a million charts and logos. 

Wolf 359 isn't a star that's visible to the naked eye, but she could guess at its location, beyond the brighter stars that made up the lion.

From here, you couldn’t see the Hephaestus. You couldn't see any of it, all the bullshit that they went through just to get to this point, where Minkowski could look up at the night sky and think about how beautiful it was.

She wonders now if Lovelace had the same thoughts. Or had it been too long for her, to still see the constellation and not everything she had lost? 

Sometimes Lovelace seemed as distant as their ex-red dwarf. Hard to understand. She was almost as terrifying, especially at first. When Lovelace first showed up, everything changed, and maybe it wasn’t for the worse or the better in the end, but it was different. And yet—like the stars, she was beautiful, in her own way. She was a person, beneath it all, and she was part of Minkowski’s crew. That meant something.

Is she still? Are any of them still? Did the mission end when they touched down on the ground? Or does it end tomorrow, when they each go their separate ways and try their hardest to forget something they’ll never possibly be able to? Does it ever end, for any of them?

***

Minkowski is not asleep. 

The blankets feel too heavy. _Everything_ feels too heavy. 

A few feet away, on the other side of the bed, she can see Lovelace’s breath rising and falling. She’s glad one of them is getting sleep, after so long.

She isn’t sure how they got to this point. They made it back, made it home. Why doesn’t it feel like it?

In the morning, in the future, there will things to be done. Statements to be given, forms to be signed, self-righteous crusades to be set upon. Loved ones to be reunited with. 

But right now there is just this hotel room, this rest stop while they wait to move on. The others, across the hall, no different than ever. But here, Minkowski. But here, Lovelace, their breath the only disruption to the stillness of the room.

Hera isn’t listening. That hasn't happened in years. It feels like every step she took today, everything she did, was like that—the first she's done it since before. This is the first time Minkowski has been this alone in a very long time.

Is it wrong that all she wants is for that not be the case? She wants someone to be there. Lovelace is there, and Minkowski is half-tempted to wake her up, but she doesn’t. She won’t. God knows when the last time that woman slept was.

Minkowski closes her eyes. She tries not to think of what tomorrow will bring (or the next day, or the next, or the next). Wishes Lovelace was closer to her. Wishes her husband was closer to her. 

But the latter is vague and abstract. For all that time she was gone, he was as far away. As far away as Wolf 359 is now, and in a way, he still is. She can’t quite reconcile the two realities, the _before_ and the _during_. (What does _after_ look like, for her?) It’s all too abstract, to think that he’s still waiting for her.

Missing him was something consistent, something normal, and she isn’t sure she remembers how not to anymore. The ache of his absence is reassuring in its constance.

Lovelace was there. The others were too, but Lovelace is _still_ here, and there’s something in Minkowski that wants to reach out to her, to have the knowledge that they are both of them real and here. Back on Earth.

Minkowski’s eyes are open again, and she is watching Lovelace’s sleeping face and thinking about her husband. She feels too heavy, gravity’s weight pinning her down against the bed in a way she isn’t used to.

Sleep comes, eventually.


End file.
